The Mizoram Cabinet recently approved the establishment of temporary shelters and other facilities for several illegal Bangladeshi migrants who sought refuge in the northeastern state following an alleged military exercise by Bangladeshi forces. Reportedly Bangladeshi security forces conducted the operation against the Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA), an armed insurgent group active in Bangladesh’s Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).
According to a PTI report quoted by The Indian Express, a meeting of the Mizoram Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Zoramthanga on Tuesday (November 22) expressed sympathy for the migrants, who are from the Chin-Kuki-Mizo communities, and decided to provide “temporary shelter, food, and other relief as per the convenience of the state government.”
According to a senior government source reported by The Hindu, the displaced people approached a Border Security Force (BSF) patrol base on the Bangladesh-Mizoram border in the wee hours of November 20 and were permitted to cross. “They were without any belongings and were allowed to enter India on humanitarian grounds,” the official explained. The group of people included children without guardians.
The Bangladeshi nationals are currently staying in villages near the border. As the villagers in those villages belong to the same community as the refugees, the villagers provided them with accommodation in their villages. Humanitarian aides are being provided to them by NGOs, village committees and civil societies, while the BSF is ensuring their safety and security. Young Mizo Association (YMA), the largest civil society organisation in Mizoram has also promised humanitarian assistance to the ethnic Kuki-Chin refugees from Bangladesh.
At least 274 people from Bangladesh, including 137 children, have been accommodated at Parva village in south Mizoram’s Lawngtlai district, bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar, a senior official in the state home department said. They fled from their villagers along the border after Bangladesh Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) launched an operation against Kuki-Chin National Army (KNA), in which civilians are also getting hurt.
KNA is the armed wing of the Kuki-Chin National Front (KNF), a political party formed by the ethnic Kuki-Chin-Mizo community in Bangladesh. KNF is demanding a separate state and security the minoryt community in the country.
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Christian community in Bangladesh has significant ethnic relations with Mizoram. The CHT is a poor mountainous, wooded territory that spans more than 13,000 square kilometres of southeastern Bangladesh’s Khagrachari, Rangamati, and Bandarban districts, bordering Mizoram to the east, Tripura to the north, and Myanmar to the southeast and south. Chittagong Hills Tracts is home to around 350000 Kuki-Chin-Mizo people.
As per reports, the migrants are referred to as “officially displaced persons” in the official records. According to a top Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) official, the subject is being reviewed with the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
The Kuki-Chin people in Bangladesh are originally from Mizoram and many of them have relatives in the Indian state.
Starting roughly July-August 2021, Mizoram has been hosting approximately 30,000 migrants escaping conflict in Myanmar’s Chin state. Since the military coup in February 2021, a pro-democracy civilian resistance group known as the Chin Defence Force, supported and trained by the Chin National Army (CNA), an ethnic armed organisation operating in Myanmar, has been battling the junta’s soldiers.
The Zo Reunification Organization, established in Mizoram and working to bring the Chin-Kuki-Mizo tribes of Bangladesh and India back together, has denounced the reported atrocities committed by the Bangladeshi army against locals. According to the organization’s vice president, Lalmuanpuia Punte, they have pleaded with the people of Mizoram to provide humanitarian aid to Chin-Kuki migrants from Bangladesh, with whom the Mizos share ethnic links.
